Come on guys, its unfair to expect everyone to work for free. You get the guarantee of a working module and I'm sure Mohrenberg will back up his work. A first time builder could easily fry a diode or two, and may not have the necessary tools/skills.

Cool, hope it goes well. One suggestion though, I would seriously reconsider your phrasing on your site... I mean do you really thing people will come across a site with swearing all over it, impropper grammar etc. and decide to spend money buying items that they could get from another site at the same price that looks more respectable.

It looks a bit like a young kid wants to make some quick money and put up a quick site expecting it to be the best. I will be honest, sites with language like that usually ring out scam to me and I go elsewhere.

I agree with Lamborghini, the site has potential but the expletives, etc REALLY sing out &quot;third grade&quot; to me (especially the, erm, &quot;unique&quot; use you seem to have found for the BR pointer... Maybe you need new friends, Dude!)...

Links to Ebay-Specific questions, etc would be good considering you sell there often, as well as some sort of &quot;FAQ's&quot; regarding the eccentricities of Blu-Ray lasers in general, etc.

__________________
Been out of the "Laser Loop" for several years - WHY didn't anyone TELL me we now had Green and real BLUE diodes, especially measured in WATTS !?!?!?!

Starting over, still have my Kryton BDR Build at 401mW and one of the first Eghamus hosts with an O-like module that has faded from 151mW to about 45mW at TEM01 over the years, LOL - still have my LaserBee 1 though

On a brighter note have you considered using oscommerce? If your host has cpanel with fantastico installed then you will already have the software on there.

Stonetek uses a oscommerce software if you dont know what I mean. Even if you dont have fantastico or cpanel, assuming you have the requirments for the software you can install it manually.

That way it might take away the simplicty but it will give you more control of what goes on without having to edit pages manually and its a lot friendlier for users if everything is oganised and managed.

Greg over at Stonetek actually uses ZenCart which is a cleaner derivative of OSCommerce.

Pricing is both a science and an art. As you can see most do not know how to price products. You never price based on complaints because people will always complain about the price. You always price based on 1) what the market will bear, and 2) what you need to stay in business based on your business model. Many wannabe companies have come and gone selling laser systems because they thought they could just undercut everyone but found out later there are costs not recognized on the front end when they were purchasing from others as customers. Costing is the most important aspect of business. Even the big boys get it wrong sometimes. All we have to do is look at GM. They lose on average $2000.00 per car sold. Douglas Aircraft went out of business because they sold every airliner cheaper than it cost to make. It was a situation of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

Most small businesses severely underestimate the cost of their time and labor. What does it really cost you when you sit 12 hours per day at a desk soldering and building. There's the actual time, of course. What is that worth in $? There's the time you could be spending with family (economic utility) that cannot be done because of orders needing to be done. There's the time associated with servicing broken or damaged lasers under warranty which means you are not building for new, paying customers. There's the costs associated with all the little components required to build the system such as solder, finishing equipment, emory cloth, sandpaper, micro screwdrivers that get replaced on a regular basis, etc. Yeah, these get expensed but they represent a real cost in each laser sold.

Build a quality product with pricing based on real costs and you will be in business far longer. You have the world in which to market your products. If your mousetrap is better, people will beat a path to your door and pay a premium for that. Don't just set your sites on LPF members. No offense but everyone want's it for free here. That's the nature of a hobby. Think of new ways to use or market the products. Think about new hosts that meet a need outside of the hobby market. Always be thinking about the BBD (bigger better deal). You can always do that and still provide good service to your customers. The goal of businesses is not to run stagnant. The goal is to grow.

Oh, burn down your site. Put up a proper site. Once again, the world will be watching and if you want business beyond hobbyists it has to be professional; You know, first impressions and all.

EDIT: One other thought. Get a .com name. If you use .org, people will tend to enter .com out of habit and end up somewhere you don't want them to be. They end up at burninglaser.com which is for sale meaning if you are doing well someone can spend the money to purchase that name and a portion of your potential customers will end up on a site selling lasers that are not yours. Just something to keep in mind.

I agree with Lamborghini, the site has potential but the expletives, etc REALLY sing out &quot;third grade&quot; to me (especially the, erm, &quot;unique&quot; use you seem to have found for the BR pointer... Maybe you need new friends, Dude!)...

Links to Ebay-Specific questions, etc would be good considering you sell there often, as well as some sort of &quot;FAQ's&quot; regarding the eccentricities of Blu-Ray lasers in general, etc.

and as far as the &quot;professionalism&quot;....i have to act professional all day so when it comes to my hobby i'll think i'll pass, i'm not looking for this to be a side job...just a hobby that might be able to pay for itself.
you'll find the professionalism in the build, not my character

[quote author=BrewCityMusic link=1234933863/0#8 date=1234962708]I agree with Lamborghini, the site has potential but the expletives, etc REALLY sing out &quot;third grade&quot; to me (especially the, erm, &quot;unique&quot; use you seem to have found for the BR pointer... Maybe you need new friends, Dude!)...

Links to Ebay-Specific questions, etc would be good considering you sell there often, as well as some sort of &quot;FAQ's&quot; regarding the eccentricities of Blu-Ray lasers in general, etc.

and as far as the &quot;professionalism&quot;....i have to act professional all day so when it comes to my hobby i'll think i'll pass, i'm not looking for this to be a side job...just a hobby that might be able to pay for itself.
you'll find the professionalism in the build, not my character *

[/quote]

I guess if your just selling to people on this site who already know sho you are then there is no problem but image and first impressions is everything.

Say you were a car salesman, you wouldnt talk to your customer like &quot;the last version was totally shit, i had one but it fucked up when I got home, buy this one its fucking awesome bitch&quot; as I am 100% sure that your customer would walk away and probally even leave a complaint. If you spoke to the customer in a more professional manor then that would make the sale.

Im not saying you have to be professional in such a manor that makes it boring to read, theres no harm in a bit of character to the site content but its just the way your typing the information thats going to make people avoid buying from you.

If you charge proper hourly rates, there is no way you can compete with other manufacturers as long as you are assembling them manually and they have production lines (and/or barns full of &lt;$5 a day workers) running in china. Additional problem is that enthousiasts from forums tend to be rather picky towards the price, they just look at parts costs (i'd personally say $50 for assembling one really is not excessive if it takes 2 hours!).

Selling to the general public might get better prices if you do it from a website that looks like serious business, but that takes investments in websites, marketing, etc.

&quot;Selling stuff online&quot; is often seen as an easy quick buck with minimal risks. I personally work in web development and many of my clients are setting up online stores (in all kinds of goods). If there is one thing i've learned, it's that getting an online store running well can prove very difficult, even if you have a good plan to start with.

If you're planning to sell a whole lot of lasers then you really should change the language and STYLE of the website.

I know it is a very recent prototype, but you really need to make it prettier, Number One Reason WickedLasers sells so much.
Most people would really think it's a scam or just not trustworthy site to spend $140.00 in only one buy.